Cabinet in special meeting to consider establishing military government over islands along coast of South Carolina. Lincoln interviews two paroled Southern prisoners. Bates, Diary.

Lincoln examines case of Col. Magoffin. N.Y. Tribune, 15 April 1862.

Transmits information on Mexican affairs to House of Representatives. Abraham Lincoln to the House of Representatives, 14 April 1862, CW, 5:188.

Sen. Browning (Ill.) at White House in evening discusses with President bill to end slavery in District of Columbia, and successor for Judge Stephen T. Logan, former law partner of Lincoln in Springfield, on commission to examine into claims at Cairo, Ill. Browning, Diary; Browning to Grimshaw, 15 April 1862, Orville H. Browning Papers, Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum, Springfield, IL.

Also in the evening, Bishop Daniel Payne of the African Methodist Episcopal Church has a forty-five-minute meeting with Lincoln, Carl Schurz and Elihu B. Washburne also present. Payne assures the President that "he had the prayers of the colored people; and since the booming of rebel cannon in Charleston harbor, first broke the stillness of morn, as the shot fell on Sumter's walls, he had prayed that God would stand behind the Government at Washington, as he had stood behind the throne of David, and the Government at Richmond might wax weaker and weaker." The President assures Payne of "his reliance on Divine Providence" and expresses a hearty wish for the welfare of the colored race. Christian Recorder (Philadelphia, PA), 26 April 1862, 2:3; Daniel A. Payne, Recollections of Seventy Years (Nashville, TN: Publishing House of the A.M.E. Sunday School Union, 1888), 146-48.